


a star-chart in rotation

by halcyonine



Category: A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine
Genre: Dining, F/M, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halcyonine/pseuds/halcyonine
Summary: Bit by bit, Yskandr falls in love.
Relationships: Yskandr Aghavn/Nineteen Adze/Six Direction
Comments: 15
Kudos: 33
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	a star-chart in rotation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oliviacirce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliviacirce/gifts).



> happy Yuletide! this fic is set some five years pre-canon, which is when the timeline suggests this complicated trio really started trio-ing. I hope you enjoy <3

“On Lsel, we remember everything,” says Yskandr.

He is lying in one of the many imperial beds when he allows this piece of half-treason to slide out of his mouth, joining its many previous siblings to hang in the air like the pieces of an unfilled star-chart. Someday, soon, there will be enough of them for him to assemble the completed version, to form the constellation of an imago holding the secrets of Lsel and offer it to the Emperor, but today is not that day. The dawnlamps in this room are the red of dying stars; he wonders if that day would be Lsel’s ruin or salvation.

Perhaps both. Perhaps neither. A star-chart in full holographic projection can rotate.

Next to him, Six Direction hums, soft and thoughtful. The sound travels to rest somewhere near Yskandr’s chest. “And what do you remember,” the Emperor asks, “out of everything?”

Tsagkel Ambak remembers countless hours in a precisely-measured space, poring over infofiche against the vast backdrop of space and the no-less-vast hull of a Teixcalaanli warship as they negotiated the independent rights of Lsel. Before her, a negotiator recalls the minutiae of a trade agreement with Svava on molybdenum, and before _her_ is an impression of smiling through tight-twisted tension. None of them are memories Teixcalaan knows; Yskandr lets none of them slip past his lips.

“Our first meeting,” he says instead, sinking a little further into the pillow. Six Direction’s eyes are inscrutable, but it takes little to imagine the mildly surprised disappointment. They are both very aware of their games. “You were resplendent on the throne. I was drunk.”

That admission earns a fractional widening of the Emperor’s eyes. Yskandr widens his own, despite the sleepy desire to let them fall closed. “Not by much,” he adds. “Only a little.”

“You did not seem very drunk,” Six Direction concedes. His mood, Yskandr senses, has shifted again, to amusement, though only the stars know whether it is from the admission or from indulgence. Both acceptable, though the latter more satisfying. “An interesting way to begin your tenure, Ambassador Aghavn.”

“I am an interesting person, Your Majesty,” Yskandr answers, which earns him another widening of the eyes. Six Direction’s hand traces against his palm a glyph that stands for _lying by omission_ in Teixcalaanli epics and _understatement_ in plaintext, and there is a rich fondness in his voice when he speaks again.

“That you are,” he says, “though there are many other adjectives you may also like to consider.”

Yskandr curls his fingers around the Emperor’s, feeling heat flow from every point of contact. Some nights, Six Direction burns with his own furnace; if he were a Stationer, Heritage would have recorded him long ago. Yskandr does not follow that line of wishful thinking to its end. “I hope handsome is one of them,” he says, leaning forward to press their foreheads together.

The Emperor does not dignify that with a response. His other hand reaches up and cradles the side of Yskandr’s face, leaving sunburn-heat where they touch. “Go to sleep, Yskandr,” he says, gently.

The dawnlamps fade away to afterimages. Yskandr closes his eyes and obeys.

⋄

He hadn’t _intended_ to be drunk at the imperial banquet.

Only that a week in Teixcalaan hadn’t been remotely long enough for him to acquaint himself with more than ten dishes, all haggled over in the streets or delivered to his door, and certainly not enough to familiarise himself with the contents of any of the dainty glasses being carried on trays around the spectacle that was Palace-Earth, and everyone within his line of sight was holding one. He’d taken one just to occupy his hands, and then somewhere his resolution to avoid drinking it had disappeared, and then Fifteen Engine was taking the glass away and waving his hand in front of his face. Tsagkel had sighed, her personality briefly steel-clear as alcohol clouded his own neural pathways, before performing a gross overstepping of boundaries between a well-integrated imago and person by resetting at least half of his endocrine system. Just in time, too, as Fifteen Engine had begun leading him towards the ascending sun-spear throne.

The word that leapt to his mind as he watched it rise was not a word found in the Lsel lexicon; there were no stars of significant immensity nearby for Lsel’s poets to need to condense _the blinding immensity of a supergiant_ into a single word. Yskandr had thought the word in Teixcalaanli, and then spoke to the Emperor in Teixcalaanli, and listened to the poetry after in Teixcalaanli with a glass of some stronger Teixcalaanli drink in his hands.

By the time he left the banquet, he could taste the empire on his tongue. It was crisp with sparkling allusion, and almost enough to forget Darj Tarats.

⋄

When Yskandr wakes, the dawnlamps are back on their lowest setting, a red just enough to outline the corners of the room and the cloudhook back over Six Direction’s eye. Six Direction is still horizontal, which Yskandr supposes is an improvement. Sometimes, watching him work is enough for Yskandr to question the sanity of every emperor who claimed the throne by conquest, who in doing so forfeited their right to sleep – but of course, not all emperors are Six Direction, who has seemingly convinced his body to accept work as a substitute for sleep.

“Go to sleep, Your Brilliance,” he murmurs anyway, a reflexive struggle against the inevitability of the Emperor’s practiced insomnia. Stars can change orbits faster than Six Direction changes his habits. Yskandr knows a great deal about those habits now; thinking about them makes some part of him ache, tender as a bruise.

Six Direction’s hand curls loosely around his. “Go back to sleep, Yskandr,” he chides, perfectly ignoring the irony. There is one set of standards for the Emperor – for the Empire, for the City, for the world – and another set for everyone else. Yskandr tangles their fingers together, and Six Direction’s thumb brushes over his knuckles.

When he wakes again it is to the sight of the back of an infograph display, glyphs in reverse swarming under the steady gaze of the Emperor. The dawnlamps are off, and the sun is streaming through a starburst of stained glass. There are another five infographs waiting upon Six Direction, and Yskandr’s brain puts together the star-chart in one and the subheadings of another to identify the ongoing trade negotiations in the Western Arc that have plagued the Ministry of Trade for the past three months. Six Direction’s eyes flicker to his, widening briefly in a smile, before returning to the infographs.

Yskandr pushes himself up onto one elbow, and watches, and watches.

⋄

The _ezuazuacat_ who corners him in a small restaurant in Plaza South Seven is Nineteen Adze, starkly blazing in white against the deep-space blues of the restaurant’s interior like a star deigning to descend from the heavens. Plaza South Seven is not known for its understanding of City politics, but Teixcalaanlitzim melt away from her approach as if intuitively sensing her danger.

Or perhaps her arrival is being broadcast all over the newsfeeds. Yskandr sneaks a glance at the flat holoscreen, but Channel Three – documentary and science – is busy explaining the harvesting of estuary mussels. If there are tabloids tracking the _ezuazuacat_ ’s every movement, and Yskandr simultaneously doubts and is assured of their existence, he has no access to them.

“Ambassador Aghavn.”

“Your Excellency,” he replies. He keeps his face carefully impassive under her scrutiny, an intensity composed, he imagines, of knives so fine they exit painlessly. She sits down and examines the menu, and a waitress takes her order with hands that shake slightly throughout her greeting.

The two other patrons of the restaurant disappear so quickly that a new subset of physics could be invented to describe their movement. Nineteen Adze settles her elbows on the table and laces her hands together. “You are a very difficult person to track down, Ambassador.”

“Only because Channel Six insists this casserole must be eaten straight from the kitchen,” Yskandr replies. Nineteen Adze is not _wrong_ , per se – his friends have all complained at some point or other that the only way to be certain of finding him is to send an infofiche stick the night before, which Yskandr thinks is both terribly flattering and entirely wasteful – but recently his evening schedule has become clockwork-regular, and he is certain the most dangerous woman at court knows it. That she has chosen a hole-in-the-wall establishment to confront him speaks volumes on its own.

“The taste is much poorer when cooled,” she agrees. “But surely the palace cooks could have produced its equal, and saved you the journey here.”

The palace cooks, of course, are ordinarily under no obligations to prepare meals for anyone beyond the emperor and the imperial household staff. “I find verisimilitude to be as important to the culinary experience as the dish itself, Your Excellency,” Yskandr answers, straight-faced.

Nineteen Adze raises a disbelieving eyebrow right as the waitress reappears with Yskandr’s casserole. They pause for long enough to let her place it on the table, spreading a rich aroma that justifies all of Channel Six’s excited embellishment. “An hour’s travel for the sake of verisimilitude,” she finally remarks. “You must be very principled, Ambassador.”

 _Principled_ is not the word Yskandr would have chosen. Foolish, perhaps, or silly, but certainly not principled. “An hour’s travel for the sake of meeting me,” is what he says aloud. “I am quite flattered by the attention, Your Excellency.”

Her eyes turn as sharp as a knife. The arrival of her soup only thickens the tension, to the point where the waitress all but runs away from them. “I see why His Brilliance likes you,” she says abruptly, and from an _ezuazuacat_ it is one of the most terrifying compliments he has ever received.

He hides the cascade of emotions in the casserole, which truly deserves more of his attention than he can quite spare for it. Nineteen Adze takes sips of her soup. They eat in a kind of tentative silence, the mussel-harvesting documentary running in the background, until Nineteen Adze places her spoon down and regards him with a consideration entirely different to her initial scrutiny.

“From one member of the imperial court to another,” she says, “what are your opinions on Four Juniper’s encomiastic verse?”

Four Juniper’s encomiastic verse, which has ciphered court communications for the past two weeks, is technically sublime. It is also utterly terrible, and Yskandr is fairly certain even picking traits out by lottery can produce a more accurate rendering of Six Direction. “The judges liked it,” he says, spreading all his fingers apart. “I found it quite enlightening.”

“Enlightening for the court, perhaps,” Nineteen Adze says. “I won’t flatter you by pretending we don’t know better. How do you _really_ feel about the allusion to Nine Flood? I promise your answer won’t be investigated for sedition.”

The last part is said so wryly Yskandr lets his eyes grow wide with laughter. “It’s not a very accurate allusion,” he allows, and then, on impulse, adds: “One could argue His Brilliance is closer to Twelve Solar-Flare, and twice as sleepless.”

Nineteen Adze’s smile is a gleaming thing, sharp with delight. “True, however much I would like to pretend otherwise,” she says. “Did you also disagree with the symbolism of the starships and the lyrebird?”

He does – but not for the same reasons as Nineteen Adze, and in the time it takes to argue his point through they change locations from the restaurant to the streets to the subway, Teixcalaanlitzim scattering before them. Nineteen Adze has several opinions on the interplay between form, technique and content, not all of which play congruent to Yskandr’s own opinions, and it makes for refreshing debate on the trip back to Palace-Earth. They separate in front of Nineteen Adze’s apartments, though not before Yskandr accepts an invitation to dinner some other time, and it is only when Yskandr is back in his own suite that he realises his eyes are still wide in a Teixcalaanli smile.

He studies the Yskandr in the mirror, hearing Tsagkel’s long sigh in the corner of his mind. Inadvisable, the wisdom of past generations suggest, has stopped covering his actions long ago.

Yskandr agrees with them. He turns away from the mirror, and leaves for the depths of Palace-Earth.

⋄

“Your _ezuazuacat_ is flirting with me.”

Six Direction’s hands pause over his ever-present halo of infographs, digesting the piece of information. “I see. Nineteen Adze has excellent taste, as always.”

Yskandr sits down on a floor cushion and waits. Six Direction continues working through the legislation on the infographs, whose subheadings reveal it as some sort of environmental treatise. Eventually, the Emperor looks up, and his voice is quietly fond when he says, “Multiple-partner relationships form a sizable sector of the census results, you know.”

Yskandr _does_ know. In his early years of office, he had made a point of recording every point of similarity between Lsel and Teixcalaan he could find, evidence for some nebulous argument out of his reach; the list is burned now, into ash and into his memory after he made the mistake of setting it to meter. “They generally don’t feature the reigning emperor,” he says dryly, and Six Direction smiles.

He wonders, suddenly, what Six Direction would look like with a Lsel smile; imagines, with no small difficulty, the way it would change his face, smiles conspiratorial and secret and radiant. The Emperor gestures, and Yskandr goes and sits next to him on the floor, leaning his head against his knee. One of Six Direction’s hands cards gently through his hair, and warmth blazes out from every point of contact.

“Any other comments?” Yskandr murmurs after a good ten minutes pass by, hesitant to break the silence Six Direction has returned to work in. Six Direction considers it, the environmental treatise folding away on the leading infograph, and when Yskandr turns his head he is already looking at him, expressionlessly serious. Then:

“At least one of us will be able to keep up with your libido,” Six Direction says, eyes smugly wide, and Yskandr makes a noise even he can’t classify. He stares at the Emperor for a while, Six Direction laughing back at him, and turns and buries his face into the couch. He takes it all back; Yskander does _not_ want to see the Emperor smiling a Lsel-smile. He’s not sure he could survive the experience.

Six Direction’s hand falls back into his hair. Yskandr relaxes into the touch, helplessly happy, and wonders if he could keep this feeling forever.

⋄

Nineteen Adze’s understanding of _dinner_ apparently includes pre-meal exercise, which is the most reasonable justification Yskandr can find for meeting at her apartment only to depart immediately on the twenty-minute walk to Palace-Earth that takes only twelve from his own residence. That, or his company warrants it, which Yskandr does not permit himself to think deeply about. Their conversation meanders easily enough, from cuisine to exports to the Western Arc negotiations about to enter yet another drawn-out month; it seems Nineteen Adze can be taken out of work, but the work cannot be taken out of her.

Nineteen Adze laughs when he points that out. “A personal failing, I understand,” she says, sharp with amusement. It is terribly easy to like her, as she doubtless intends; Yskandr keeps _that_ thought well away from his mouth, and shrugs.

“I’m sure Teixcalaan appreciates it.” The corridor of Palace-Earth they are in is stretching the boundaries of Yskandr’s recall of the inner palace, not least because it is twice as guarded as he remembers it being, but he is quite certain it heads towards the kitchens. “Please don’t tell me you want to prove the palace cooks can cook an excellent casserole. Do the _ezuazuacatlim_ have the privilege of eating from the imperial kitchens?”

“We are very close to His Brilliance, but not on the level of his household staff,” Nineteen Adze answers dryly. “And you can ask for casserole if you’d like, but I’m afraid it will be… lacking in verisimilitude.”

Yskandr fights the urge to sigh. Nineteen Adze’s smirk suits her terribly well, eyes as triumphant as any predator, and he almost misses the sight of it when she turns away, nodding to the guards to open a door. The room it reveals is cozy, dawnlamps spilling gold against black décor, and Yskandr follows Nineteen Adze in for all of three steps before he stops dead.

Six Direction looks up. The ring of infographs gravitating around him vanish, their afterimage burning in oddly round spots in Yskandr’s vision before his brain slowly identifies the spots as covered dishes. The surprise leaves him suddenly unmoored, on the edge of – something, that still just barely eludes his grasp even as his brain scrambles to piece itself together.

“I was beginning to wonder,” the Emperor says, “if you had gotten lost. Sit.”

Yskandr sits. Nineteen Adze sits down opposite him, composed as a cat. “Hardly lost, Your Brilliance. We were merely engrossed in discussion.”

“Your Brilliance,” Yskandr says, regaining his voice, “I have the distinct impression I am unprepared for this well-orchestrated event.”

Six Direction considers it. “Twenty-Nine Bridge was unusually reticent over my evening engagements today,” he says, looking directly at Nineteen Adze. The innocent smile she wears fools exactly none of them. “It seems we will have to improvise, Yskandr.”

Yskandr cannot even _begin_ to imagine the amount of effort needed to clear the Emperor’s schedule for any meaningful stretch of time, much less an entire evening, which is exactly what Nineteen Adze must have done. “You terrify me,” he says to her, letting the poetic connotations finish his sentence for him. Both Nineteen Adze and Six Direction laugh at that, and he grounds himself with it, feeling a little of the lightheadedness slip away.

“Shall we eat?” Six Direction asks.

The food is delightful. Yskandr relaxes as the evening unfolds, listening to the easy flow of conversation between the Emperor and his _ezuazuacat_ ; they drift from topic to topic, neither of them able to avoid circling back to work for long. As far as Yskandr is aware, romantic dinners are _not_ supposed to involve in-depth discussion on the merits of funding the Science Ministry’s new hydroponics project, which if successful could allow for the rehabilitation of three different southern ecosystems away from their present agricultural use. He makes a mental note to inquire after it in the future; Lsel Station has no environment to rehabilitate, but increased efficiency and output is something the Councilor for Hydroponics would never turn down.

He leans back into his chair, pleasantly comfortable, and Six Direction glances at him. “Are we boring you, Yskandr?”

“Not at all,” he replies, honest.

Both of them smile.

Later, Nineteen Adze leans into him, small enough to fit neatly against his side as they sit on the couch facing the holoscreen. Somehow, they have ended up watching a holodrama adaptation of _Red Flowerbuds for Thirty Ribbon_ , and Yskandr finds himself unable to look away from the increasingly melodramatic acting. On his other side, the Emperor has managed to return to work, despite their best efforts, and two dim infographs spill out reports from the Ministry of Trade. The light from the holoscreen washes colours all over his skin.

Yskandr thinks, with frightening clarity, that he is falling in love.

His head cannot imagine anyone worse to lose his heart to. He cannot imagine anyone better to give his heart to, and he will have to grapple with both of those truths sometime later, preferably with a large quantity of alcohol. But right now, Yskandr is content to simply sit there, in between the two of them while a holodrama rated half out of five stars plays before him, and feel terribly, wonderfully happy.


End file.
